Flushing a fluid line from a medical pump
AssigneeSmiths Medical ASD, Inc.
InventorsRicky L. Ledford, Sachin Kumar Choudhary, Lori Lynette Patoros
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and medical pump to perform a flushing procedure are provided. The medical pump is configured to execute the flushing procedure subsequent to an infusion procedure, the flushing procedure and infusion procedure lacking a specified relationship between each other until after performance of the infusion procedure. The method comprises performing an infusion procedure of a medicament with the medical pump and automatically querying in human detectable form whether to execute a flushing procedure in response to conclusion of the infusion procedure.
Claims22
A method of flushing a fluid line with a syringe pump configured to support only a single syringe at a time and execute a flushing procedure subsequent to an infusion procedure, the method comprising:
- removably mounting a first syringe to the syringe pump, the first syringe containing a medicament and being coupled to the fluid line;
- performing the infusion procedure with the syringe pump to expel the medicament from the first syringe into the fluid line;
- automatically querying in human detectable form whether to proceed with a flushing procedure in response to conclusion of the infusion procedure, the flushing procedure lacking a specified relationship with the infusion procedure until after performance of the infusion procedure;
- removing the first syringe from the syringe pump location and decoupling the fluid line from the first syringe;
- and
- in response to a determination to proceed with the flushing procedure:
- coupling a second syringe containing a flushing fluid to the fluid line, mounting the second syringe to the syringe pump, and performing the flushing procedure with the syringe pump to expel the flushing fluid into the fluid line to flush the fluid line with the flushing fluid.
A syringe pump comprising:
- a piston drive adapted to selectively couple to a plunger of one of a first syringe that contains medicament to expel the medicament therefrom and a second syringe that contains flushing fluid to expel flushing fluid therefrom;
- at least one processing unit operable to control movement of the piston drive;
- and
- a memory containing program code configured to, when executed by the at least one processing unit with said plunger of said first syringe coupled to the piston drive, perform an infusion procedure to expel a medicament from said first syringe into a fluid line coupled to said first syringe, and automatically query in human detectable form whether to proceed with a flushing procedure in response to conclusion of the infusion procedure, the flushing procedure lacking a specified relationship with the infusion procedure until after performance of the infusion procedure, the program code further configured to, in response to determining to proceed with the flushing procedure, when executed by the at least one processing unit with said plunger of said second syringe coupled to the piston drive, perform the flushing procedure to expel the flushing fluid into the fluid line to flush the fluid line with the flushing fluid.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.